She shook her head quickly, aghast. ‘Forgive me. I meant no offence!’ Her eyes turned lime.
Perhaps it was not a threat at all, but simple stupidity. I needed to do some damage control here. The cloak settled upon my shoulders. ‘You call me useless and do not wish to offend?’ I asked pompously.
‘Forgive me,’ she breathed again. Her cheeks and ears were turning pink. ‘I am new to the palace. I forget myself, and the way of things.’
I realised what it was. Painful innocence.
‘I’ve been practising in secret,’ I admitted. ‘I was embarrassed at my inability.’
‘You have overcome it,’ she assured me.
‘Who are you?’
‘No one, Majesty. One of the Empress’ maids.’
‘Bonded, yes?’
She nodded. It was the only way she’d be allowed to work in the palace, but still, she should have worn a blindfold – it was the law.
My headache was starting to intensify. I sighed, rubbing my eyes. ‘I cannot have you telling anyone about what you’ve seen.’
Radha lifted her gaze to mine. Again, I was surprised by the audacity. Had she not been instructed upon her employment? ‘Tell them, Majesty,’ she implored. ‘Why hide it?’
‘Tell them what? That I can manage a few clumsy sword moves?’
She frowned. Searched my face. ‘I learnt as a youth. Trained at the Limontae academy. I have seen many a swordfighter. But believe me when I say I’ve never seen one who moved as you just did, Majesty.’
My heart sank as I realised what I was going to have to do. ‘A misfortune for you,’ I murmured, dropping my accent and the high-pitched timber I affected.
She was clever. She heard it. Her gaze sharpened, turned to azure. But she did not struggle or cry out when I took hold of her arm and escorted her to the dungeon.
Thorne
We had come through the rock region with a few sprained limbs and a thousand insect bites, but were otherwise in good shape given we’d made it to the first clue in just over a week. However, what I didn’t realise as we approached the heavy cloak of trees at the south of Querida was that this forest lay dark with magic. We each felt it the moment we entered. Like a touch spiriting over skin, lifting the hairs and chilling everything inside.
It did not feel pleasant. A low growl was ripped from my throat and I felt very other. The beast rattled at the cage with frightening intensity.
Finn took one look at me and stopped immediately. She and Jonah engaged in some kind of silent communication. ‘Jonah and I will go the rest of the way alone, and come back for you.’
‘Why?’ Isadora demanded.
‘This much soul magic will be harmful to you.’
‘Why not to you?’
‘We have more practice in bearing it.’
I looked at Penn, wondering how I could get Isadora to stay here with him while I escorted the twins. With the magic of the forest prickling against my skin, I looked at the young red-haired boy and wondered if he had any idea where we approached.
He surprised me yet again by saying simply, ‘I would like to come with you.’
Jonah and Finn looked at Penn carefully, and then Finn nodded. ‘Of course.’ She glanced at Isadora and me with a roll of her eyes. ‘I suppose you two will be demanding to come too?’
We nodded.
‘Then I’ll enjoy watching you puke your guts up.’ She flashed us a sweet smile and led the way deeper into the forest.
Finn and I had spent zero time alone since the night with Hess. She was making sure of it. But that didn’t stop us from watching each other. I felt it every time her eyes grazed me, and I knew she felt it when mine rested upon her. Over fires we stared at each other, unable to look away, as if pulled by some impossible, yearning ache we could deny in words but not in our bodies.
If I tried to speak with her she simply levelled me with a look dripping with such scorn that it made my insides shrivel up. Sometimes I thought I understood her perfectly, and then within the space of a glance or a word I would feel completely blind to her. She was sending me mad trying to put all the pieces together.
In moments of weariness I would tell myself to dislike her once more. It was easier than this confusion. It cost nothing to be kind, and yet somehow she couldn’t find the desire or the space inside her to be so. Even as I thought this, the story of the boy Finn had tried to save reared its head. He was there in the back of my mind, every second of the day. I couldn’t work out if I believed that trauma could be an excuse for unkindness. But I could see the obvious self-loathing she harboured. It made me think that perhaps if she disliked herself enough for the two of us, I needn’t bother. And then I would come, inevitably, to what lay beneath all my efforts. To the truth that she might be unkind, but she was also brave and clever and protective and funny, and no matter how hard I tried I didn’t actually dislike her at all.
The trees had started to die. It made something in my chest clench to see blackened trunks and barren boughs, and not a living thing in sight. It was a ghost forest, something deeply disturbing in its unnatural quiet. Grey and black fingers reached up into the darkening sky and made spectral silhouettes before the moon.
Something moved and I realised there was something alive after all. A single black raven, perched on a low branch, gazing at us with beady golden eyes.
I watched it as we passed quietly by, and was startled when it launched itself into the air. With a loud squawk it flapped once, twice, thrice, and then without any warning at all, the raven fell from its height and plummeted straight into the earth.
Penn sprinted ahead and was crouched over it when the rest of us arrived. ‘It’s dead!’ he explained quizzically. He prodded it a few times as if to make sure. Its beady eye stared eerily.
‘It’s the warders,’ Jonah explained softly. ‘They take soul energy from everything around them in order to keep the prison secure.’
‘And when they run out of things to kill?’ I exclaimed.
Jonah’s deep blue eyes shifted to a pale mauve. ‘I don’t know.’
I shifted on the balls of my feet. ‘It occurs to me that should the warders in charge ever be compromised, they could do a vast amount of damage.’
‘It would be almost impossible, since there are so many of them. They guard each other, maintain balance and order. Spread the power out so that it cannot be overcome by a single individual.’
‘Still …’
Jonah didn’t reply for a while, and I thought he meant not to, but eventually he said very quietly, ‘In our hearts, it is what we are most afraid of.’
Finn
We moved on, keeping quiet. As we walked I started to feel weary, but it was nothing to how the others seemed to be feeling. Isadora and Penn looked pale and ill. They took regular sips of water and ate more than they normally would, trying to keep their energy levels up.
But Thorne was becoming a different creature altogether. He paced like an animal on the prowl. The humanity in his face seemed to disappear, and from deep within his chest came an urgent, dread-filled growl.
The magic and his berserker blood – they did not get along.
‘No further,’ I told him seriously.
He opened his mouth to reply, but a tremor ran down his spine and he looked as though he might have had a minor seizure or something. When it passed he simply nodded, his eyes unable to focus on anything but darting, darting.
Isadora remained with him, and my last image of her was to see her vomiting onto the dead ground.
In the distance as Jonah, Penn and I drew closer we could make out a dark smudge amongst the trees. It grew into a flat building, out the front of which waited two warders in their robes. Their skin was glowing a strange shade of aquamarine, a mark of how much power they were using at this very moment.
‘Greetings,’ one of them said. They looked identical to each other and I couldn’t tell which one of them had spoken. ‘We must be quick. You’ll not withstand this place much
longer.’
We entered the building and poor Penn hit the ground as though something had smashed into him. It was the force of the magic, its pressure enough to make it feel as though his skull was being crushed. A whimper left him, and Jonah bent to scoop him up.
‘We were informed of your arrival and have made you a copy of Agathon’s parchment,’ one of the warders said.
I shared a suspicious look with Jonah. This seemed awfully easy. None of us had spoken a word. Penn’s eyes rolled back in his head.
The building had no roof but opened to the sky above. Within it there were several warders rushing around as though attending to something dire.
‘You will be needing horses, too,’ our warder said.
‘That’s very generous of you,’ I replied, waiting for the catch. ‘But why?’
‘You are on a royal search,’ he explained. ‘The other groups, if they make it this far, will be given the same.’
‘I’d like to see my parents,’ Penn requested, slurring badly.
‘There are to be no visitations at this time.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘What’s going on in here?’
Ignoring my question, they handed us a pack in which I assumed the parchment waited, then led us to another door, beyond which waited several horses.
‘How do they stand the magic?’ I asked, gesturing to the mounts.
‘They are wreathed in protection wards and thus cannot be drained of their energy. They will get you to safety.’
I had no idea what was going on as we were shepherded swiftly onto the horses.
‘We’ll need more – there are two more in our party,’ I said.
‘We can spare you three, but that is all.’
So I held onto the reins of the third horse, while Jonah and Penn shared the second, and we were spurred away. I had never been more confused in my life.
The horses moved swiftly across the broken earth. Over the cantering of their hooves I could hear Penn muttering over and over again, ‘I’d like to see my parents. I’d like to see my parents. I’d like to see my parents.’
It caught and squeezed my heart, and I wished for his sake that the world were a fairer place.
Thorne and Isadora were where we’d left them, and it was no small feat trying to get them onto the horses. He was barely conscious, and Isadora kept vomiting. In the end the only way we could think to configure it was to have Thorne ride behind me, for he was unable to control his own reins and would fall off without someone to lean on. Isadora took the horse on her own, insisting, between retches, that she could manage. Leaving Jonah to continue carrying Penn, who had slipped heavily into sleep.
Past the dead raven we rode, under ghostly trees, through moonlight. We came to living forest at a gallop and slowed our horses with relief.
‘What was that about?’ I asked Jonah breathlessly.
He met my gaze and he did not look confused, he looked grim. His eyes turned navy. ‘They were guarding their minds very closely, for they knew I was a warder. But the chaos … it had them ruffled. They were split too far. And I heard something. A stray thought.’
I felt my hands tighten around the reins.
‘There’s been an escape.’
As we walked the horses through the night, too rattled to make camp anywhere near the macabre warder forest, shadowy figures moved through the trees beside us. Jonah and I had noticed them several hours ago, but as Thorne, Isadora and Penn were all either unconscious or halfway there, we had said nothing but kept moving.
They were undoubtedly the Sparrow’s people. And I had no illusions about the fact that I could not fight a single one of them. I had never learnt to fight, never wished to. Jonah had his magic, but it would be sorely depleted after the prison.
So we kept walking. Quietly. Calmly.
Honestly, the situation wasn’t bothering me all that much. I was intrigued, actually, by who these people were, and why they followed a rebel leader. What was bothering me was the thought of someone escaping the warder prison. It was impossible. Warders were sent there to have their powers stripped, and the sheer amount of magic radiating around that place in order to keep them contained and harmless was gargantuan. It was not the kind of power a single warder could deny – not even a first tier warder, of which there only existed one.
Poor Jonah. He was going to be in serious trouble for saving me in the tournament. Lutius would absolutely discover the fact that he had not been using much of his own power, but mine. And then I would be in serious trouble. Perhaps the warder prison would end up as my new home after all this.
Better I died.
Which I had a fifty-fifty chance of, according to Hess.
It was close to dawn when the figures on either side of us finally moved. They wore hoods so I could barely see them, but about half a dozen moved onto the path before us. Jonah and I drew our horses to a halt. I flashed him a swift look, telling him to let me deal with it.
‘Who is your leader?’ I was surprised to hear a woman speak. She had a lisp.
‘I am,’ I told her.
‘Your name?’
‘Finn of Limontae.’
‘What is your true name?’
I stopped, mouth half open. I had no idea what to say, and then, oddly, I did. With a smile I couldn’t help, I said, ‘I have many. Would you like to hear them all?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been called Silver Tongue. Salt Girl. The Twin. Dreamer of the Siren Nights. Wild One. But the person who loves me best in the world calls me Inney, so I guess that’s the truest name of all.’
They didn’t move or confer. They remained still as statues.
‘To where do you travel, Inney?’ the woman asked me, and it was strange beyond the telling to hear her speak Jonah’s silly childhood nickname for me. He’d only called me Inney because as a child he hadn’t been able to pronounce the f. I almost laughed.
‘I haven’t figured that out yet. We came from the warder prison, and wish to get as far from it as possible before we stop and regroup.’
‘What was your business at the warder prison?’
‘You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m not really in the habit of telling cloaked strangers on the road my business.’
She moved forward, right up to my horse. Then she reached out and stroked its muzzle. ‘Do you carry these three against their will?’
I blinked, darting a glance at Isadora and Penn, both unconscious. It would certainly seem as though they’d been drugged.
‘If I was going to drug them it would be to escape them,’ I said. ‘Annoying. The lot of them.’
She didn’t respond. Not a good time for jokes, then.
‘As I said, we’ve come from the prison. It made them woozy.’
‘And why has it not affected the two of you? The twin faces?’
I considered her cloaked form, weighing up how best to approach this. ‘We have warder blood.’
‘Then we shall kill you,’ she said calmly, as I’d thought she might.
‘You’re loyal to the Sparrow, aren’t you?’ I asked her.
‘We are. And when we have killed you we will carve his mark upon your foreheads so that when your Emperor and Empress discover your corpses they will know that even royalty is not safe from us.’
Oh dear. Thorne’s birth was going to be my next plan of attack. Clearly, they had recognised him and didn’t care one way or another that he was the flimsy tether keeping Pirenti and Kaya at peace.
Another approach then. ‘How many of you are there?’ I asked. ‘A score? Two? You think it makes a difference to warders?’ She didn’t have to know that I couldn’t use my powers and that Jonah was weak.
My brother calmly lit a fire in his palm and flicked it to his left. Everyone watched as it sailed up into a tree and caught it alight. He did the same to the right, igniting a tall tree above me. I saw several of the Sparrow’s people shift uncomfortably within the sudden glow. The woman lifted a hand and they all ceased moving
once more.
‘All we seek is to pass,’ I told her softly. ‘But if you stand in our way we shall burn this entire forest down, and you with it.’
With the flames crackling, I could now see the bottom half of her face. Beneath the hood, she had an ugly scar through her lip, giving it a perpetual curl. Her hand moved to the long, curved knife at her belt, but froze before she drew it. She was staring at something.
I tried to follow her gaze, but could see nothing.
The woman barked a word so sharp and cutting that I couldn’t even understand what it was. And like that, the Sparrow’s people were gone, vanishing into the night.
We sat alone, gazing around in surprise.
‘We must be scarier than we thought,’ Jonah commented.
‘I don’t think it was us who scared them.’
He followed my eyes to see that Isadora’s hood had slipped back to reveal her white hair and bleached skin. She was asleep in the saddle, and looked every bit as ghoulish as she always did.
‘Thank Gods for superstitious fools,’ I grinned.
‘Don’t tell her,’ he bid me worriedly. ‘It would hurt her feelings.’
‘That she scared off a bunch of thugs by sleeping? I think she’d love that.’
He kicked his horse forward and I leant over to take Isadora’s reins, leading her horse behind mine.
We stopped to get everyone on the ground and covered in blankets. Thorne was a struggle – Jonah and I didn’t have the strength to lift him off the horse, so we had to pull him down and try to catch him, which resulted in both of us crushed beneath him and sent into hushed hysterics.
‘My Gods,’ I gasped as we managed to extricate ourselves. ‘Are his bones made of lead?’
‘Shh,’ Jonah laughed, placing blankets over the three sleeping beauties. We didn’t make a fire, concerned about who else might be in this forest to see it. Instead Jonah and I kept watch until the sun had risen.
‘Want to sneak a peek at the clue?’ I asked him, smiling naughtily.
‘We should wait for the others to wake up.’
I sighed. ‘Bor-ing. You just don’t want to annoy the Ice Queen.’
Thorne (Random Romance) Page 19